Gartner has released its newest Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management. What's on tap for WCM according to Gartner? Business impact, cross channel, integration and the cloud.

The Future of WCM According to Gartner

I don't think there are too many surprises in this latest magic quadrant for web content management (WCM). According to Gartner this was a US$ 1 billion dollar industry last year and is expected to top US$1.2 billion this year. A little break down in the WCM market:

61% North America

28% EMEA

11% Asia/Pacific

Even more interesting is that Gartner sees the WCM market accounting for more than 27% of the entire enterprise content management (ECM) market. This is probably why we hear so much about web content management from our ECM vendors, sometimes more than we do document or records management.

Note that this breakdown hasn't really changed from last when Gartner produced its last magic quadrant on WCM. And in fact, looking at the list of leaders, challengers, visionaries and niche players is a little deja vu for the most part.

WCM by Any Other Name Would Smell as...Confusing

It's no wonder organizations get so confused about web content management. There are so many different terms floating around by analysts, vendors and news orgs (yes, guilty as charged), that it's becoming a pain in the you know what to really understand what a particular vendor offers and what exactly an organization needs to ask for.

Gartner lumps all those nice terms into a single bucket: Online Channel Optimization (OCO). So this report takes a look at what "WCM" vendors today offer as either integrated or built-in features for things like digital asset management, web analytics, CRM, salesforce automation and more.

Because, as we all know by now, WCM does not stand alone. And if you are a current or former "WCM" vendor you better be looking at how you plan to address the wider market of services that surrounds your core product/platform. Keep in mind that this is the same way Forrester looks at web content management vendors today, except they stick to the Customer Experience Management term (note the vendors are pretty much the same too).

Gartner seems to steer clear of the "customer" reference because it sees others applications outside of the consumer market, such as non-profits, government, higher ed and things like intranets and extranets. Of course many would expand their definition of 'customer' to include these groups.

The Trends That Bind WCM

As we alluded to in the teaser, there are four driving trends that affect the web content management market according to Gartner:

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